The use of mobile technologies is steadily on the increase, for both business and personal uses. Mobile phones are a common sight today and many people own personal information management (PIM) devices, palmtop computers, and so forth, to manage their schedules, contacts, and to stay connected with friends, family, and work. Employees on the move often appreciate the value of staying connected with their business through a variety of mobile devices.
With such a variety of mobile devices, one can receive email messages, Instant Messaging (IM) messages, and Short Message Service (SMS) text messages, in addition to regular voice calls. Recently, the use of SMS and other forms of text messaging has become very popular.
Such popularity may be due, at least in part, because many mobile devices, such as mobile phones, and the like, provide support for text messaging. A user can send text messages to others even when that person has not turned on their mobile device or when they are in a location where a wireless signal might be temporarily unavailable. The popularity may also be due in part to the wide variety of applications that are available to the user of text messaging. Examples of such applications include, but are not limited to person-to-person text messaging; applications that provide information to the mobile user including, but not limited to news, weather, financial information, and the like; applications for downloading of binary data including but not limited to ring-tones, wallpapers, pictures, logos, and so forth. A user may also employ applications through text messaging that provide alert notification of email messages, fax, home monitoring alerts, or even voice message alerts.
However, on the application development and support side, developing and managing such applications may be difficult, especially if it is desirable to port the application to another country, to interface the application with yet another carrier, or to upgrade applications that may need to be supported on across multiple countries, carriers, or the like. Porting applications may involve, not only testing the application with different hardware, protocol interfaces, and the like, but, may also include modifying and/or customizing the application to interact with different carrier's policies, procedures, or the like. Managing of applications across diverse regions, countries, carriers, and so forth, may become an expensive and time-consuming activity. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.